We’ve spent months and months and months getting ready to share this big, beautiful, bundle of stories with you! StoryWeaver – Pratham Books’ open-source story publishing platform – will be ready very, very soon. If you’ve been following us via social media, you’ve probably got a vague sense of it already. But if you haven’t, here’s what it is: Essentially a digital repository of openly-licensed children’s stories, StoryWeaver aims to make multilingual stories available to children for free.
On StoryWeaver, our users (primarily educators, librarians, authors, illustrators, etc) will be able to read, create, translate and re-level children’s stories, thereby adding to a constantly growing pool of relevant, diverse children’s content. All stories on the platform will be under the CC-BY 4.0 license, it being the most open CC license.
We are aware of the power of involving the community in our work at Pratham Books. So we’re reaching out to you again, in the hope that you’ll be as excited as us about making joyful reading a more inclusive experience for children across India.
Currently, we’re looking for volunteers to proofread our stories, mainly in these languages: Odia, Punjabi, Gujarati, Telugu.
As a proof-reader for StoryWeaver, you should:
- be fluent in any one of the 4 languages mentioned above
- be very comfortable using a computer since the entire proof-reading experience will be online
- have a fair understanding of how transliteration tools work
- be committed to agreed timelines
Please note that this is only proofreading and not translation. Needless to say, if you do face ANY challenges, the StoryWeaver team will be happy to support you in any way possible. In fact, we’re holding group sessions for proofreading in both our offices (Bangalore and Delhi) between June 10-20th. You’re most welcome to join us and we promise that it will be time well spent. Else, you can always do it from wherever you are, and someone from our team can get on a call with you and guide you through the process.
If you’re interested in becoming a proofreading volunteer for StoryWeaver, do write to yamini(at)prathambooks(dot)org as soon as possible. While the immediate need is in Odia, Punjabi, Gujarati and Telugu, we’ll be happy to connect if you are proficient in other languages that are not listed here since Pratham Books is a multilingual publisher.
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UPDATE :
Within 3 days of asking for proofreading volunteers, we got 40 people reaching out to us. How amazing is that? Thanks everyone, for being so incredibly supportive! We’ve got enough volunteers for all languages but Odia. However, we’d like to slowly build a network of potential proofreaders for StoryWeaver. So it’ll be great if you could fill this short Google form with your details so that we know how to reach you. Also, we’re really keen to let you know when StoryWeaver goes live.